Implications for geopolitical worldview construction

Consultation with a manifesto text is necessary for any discourse analyst who wants to know if activists in a social movement are acting within the geopolitical worldview as set up by cultural elites. For social movement entrepreneurs, like Weatherman, the act of assembling various interpretations into an overall logical framework serves as an act of co-optation and modification of dominant frameworks already in play. Piecing together a novel-yet-comprehensive worldview is one way Weatherman leaders sought to transform the overall discourse formation of the New Left. These newly emerging mental and frame spaces appear to the potential activist as a kind of practical knowledge useful for negotiating specific contextual relations with external groups and within the organization itself. Subject positions, what can be hoped for, the means for reaching goals and the

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stories that underpin the current ingroup mindset have been preselected and presented as a stable conceptual package in the manifesto text. This preselection of contents, and schematic interactions between, them make up the interpretative grid imposed by movement leadership. Thus, a manifesto text exists as a predetermined assemblage of lexical and grammatical units pieced together to produce a semi-stable, logically coherent and collectively shared worldview. In creating their internationalist manifesto,

Weatherman sought to modify the essential structure of knowledge within the entire New Left movement. Their manifesto text contributed in creating a radically polarized

worldview. This extreme Left ideology caused all but around two hundred activists to reject direct participation with the Weatherman faction within only a few months, while keeping others hidden underground for up to a decade (see Section 2.3). My intention in this thesis has been to limit my conclusions to the construction of mental models in social movement texts, particularly those of the white New Left movement in the 1960s.

However, based on the fact that many other textual genres are written with the express intent to clearly draw in and outgroup boundaries, this exploratory model of text processing could potentially be extended. For instance, future work may focus on

religious, corporate or more conventional political texts, where collective identity, ethical norms, past mindsets, strategic plans and utopian goals are presented as a system of beliefs, attitudes and ideas.

One way the construction of mental models directly contributes to the building of a coherent worldview is through construal of discourse contents within imagistic spaces. Depending on the intent of the writer, s/he is able to impose constraints on the way scenes and episodes are conceptualised. As demonstrated with the Weatherman text, lexical and grammatical constructions are ‘paired at the conceptual level with variants of different image schemas and their selection in discourse imposes upon the scene a specific structural configuration and distribution of attention’ (Hart 2013: 404). My goal has been to demonstrate how a cognitive discourse grammar is able to simulate scenes and episodes within STM and, through accumulation, build up into a LTM category

structure.Meanings being constructed in political speech are richly imaginative with

schematizations, categorizations, metaphorical projections and deictic spaces being fundamental. As the reader takes up the manifesto text, s/he begins to engage in an intersubjective process of meaning making, where lexical and grammatical constructions cue a simulation of discourse contents from the writer’s perspective. This simulation, occurring inside mental models, is imagistic and dynamic in nature as meanings come as the result of conceptual contents being construed in a set manner to produce a specific situation (Langacker 2008: 43). This process of construal can become ideological in nature when the a writer chooses one construal of a situation over an alternative in order to guide the reader’s thought processes in understanding the political situation from a particular point of view. Thus, the critical task when employing cognitive discourse grammar is to determine the construal of discourse contents via the imagistic structures that ideologically-loaded linguistic constructions impose.

Jeffries (2010a) discusses how encountering the same conceptual structures on a consistent basis in STM may lead to conceptual entrenchment of worldview in LTM. Based on the ‘principle of minimal departure’, readers construe the situation being read about as being the closest possible to their actual reality (ibid.). This means that when reading through any text, the reader assumes everything to correspond to his or her own interpretation of how the world works, only making adjustments when the text

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of one’s view of the actual world for the duration of the reading. Through unconscious use of the minimal departure principle, readers are able to form comprehensive

representations of situations encountered in text by drawing ‘pragmatic inferences based on previous knowledge’ (Ryan 1991: 52). Jeffries (2010a: 126) hypothesizes that this principle may play a key role in the ‘conceptualisation of political texts’. Applying the logic of the minimal departure principle to non-literary texts, Jeffries claims that the reader will assume that the situation encountered in the text will be ‘as similar to the reader’s actual world as possible unless something explicitly challenges this assumption’ (ibid.).

If the reader picks up the Weatherman manifesto and reads about a domestic youth revolution and the principle of minimal departure applies, then we have a potential explanation for the ideological effects of this text. For instance, when the reader finds an opposition between ‘imperialists’ and ‘revolutionaries’, then s/he must conclude that the political identities in the world of the text are divided as such. As Ryan (1991: 53) states, ‘reading involves suspending our normal egocentric assumptions about deictic terms of reference, and assuming that the deictic centre is somewhere within the story world of the text’. In the case of manifesto texts, this shifting out of one’s own world into the reality as encoded by the text may be crucially important. For instance, if a devoted activist reads all the movement literature and is repeatedly presented with a world in which conservative political policies are the opposite of all that is moral, this worldview becomes more familiar and eventually becomes the dominant worldview through which to view geopolitical relations. This process occurs for the reader as s/he is continuously shifting out of the actual world into the world created by the writer of the text. Over time, repeatedly shifting into the deictic centre of a political writing collective may become increasingly less a conscious process as deictic shifting becomes more fluid. Eventually, the reader comes to take on the continuously encountered conceptual structures as their own perspective.

Since deictic points of view are social in nature in these imagistic models, they can be understood as ‘mental representations and processes of group members’ (Hart 2008: 122). This form of socially shared cognition can become entrenched among group

members as commonly shared conceptual networks.34 In cognitive grammatical

approaches, entrenchment of conceptual structure is thought to occur as the result of ‘automatization’. Automatization is the process learned through constant repetition, where a complex structure is so familiar that using it is ‘virtually automatic and requires little conscious monitoring’ (Langacker 2008: 16). For instance, in the case of learning the alphabet or running a race, a repetitive structure undergoes progressive entrenchment and eventually becomes unconscious. These repetitive configurations appearing during ‘usage events’ eventually become established as cognitive routines (Langacker 2008: 220). Similarly, conventionalized patterns of language use result in unconscious patterns of imagistic simulation. Once formed in this way, these reoccurring simulations, such as

SCENES AS CONTAINERS and EPISODES AS PATHS, act as templates for the interpretation of

more abstract discourse expressions (see Section 5.1.1). Hart (2014b: 108) describes conventionalized mental operations being simulated by the text as ‘entrenched

conceptual structures’ and hypothesizes: ‘Where the discursive constitution of the social

34 Cognitive neuroscience teaches us that people define their identity in constant conference with a coherent worldview. We know that narratives are necessary for understanding the socio-political situation, and that these narratives are ‘fixed in the neural circuits of our brains’ (Lakoff 2008: 38). A narrative identity is hard to shake, and it is very hard to persuade someone into a new worldview, because the worldview itself is ‘physically part of the brain’ (Lakoff 2008: 59). In order to change a person’s worldview, actual brain structure would have to change as well, which is ‘highly unlikely’ (ibid.).

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situation depends on the (re)production of social cognitions, then, entrenchment is (re)production’. I have sought to show how deictic space models built in STM are active in building and recalling relevant information from LTM structure. If both mental space and frame space are made up of the same ontological domains, semantic categories and image-schematic arrangements, this provides insight into how the online construal of discourse contents is conferring with a much more expansive offline category structure. My contention is that ongoing and repetitive construal of discourse contents in mental space leads to the stabilization of categorical structure in frame space. However, the reader is free to disregard the contents and evaluations encountered in mental space, especially if they are in conflict with dominant frame spaces already held in LTM. Alternatively, the temporarily constructed mental space may be used to strengthen or update existing frame spaces in LTM or construct new ones.

A manifesto text is essential in that it exists as an open and often conferred with text. For this reason, it is ripe for conceptual entrenchment within the ingroup. The main goal of this type of text is to set in place a geopolitical worldview, so that members of a group can come to common interpretations in a rapid manner. Since revisionary changes to the content of a political manifesto are usually only accomplished by group consensus and since worldviews are not often in a state of continual conceptual upheaval, a manifesto text is able to serve as a fixed point of reference. As a fixed point of reference for political worldview, the conceptual structures of the manifesto become part of a default structure by which group members come to interpret a never-ending sequence of geopolitical world events.

At the conclusion of this thesis it has become increasingly clear to me that any radical democratic movement, in order to compete with much more entrenched dominant worldviews, will by necessity have to formulate an effective language policy. Not just any language policy with the standard chants, flyers, slogans, speeches and insider-speak. But one that seriously takes into consideration the conceptual structure making up

political mental models. Having awareness of this unconscious process of model creation could be a very useful tool in deciding upon the messaging of a movement group.

Speaking to left-wing political movements, Wodak (2015: 187) urges them not to imitate the divisive tactics of the currently surging Right in Western nations. In contrast to a politics of fear, she advocates for a more inclusive politics, emphasizing the integration of all peoples. Similarly, Lakoff (2008) warns against simply reacting to right-wing media stunts, which he argues causes the Left to lose the chance to frame the political debate. Wodak (2015: 188) challenges the Left to ‘set their own themes and retain their egalitarian position’, which involves ‘disseminating alternative concepts, such as equality, diversity and solidarity’. For me, this agenda of the Left setting their own political themes should begin by exploring texts that have historically been successful in mass mobilization campaigns. By considering how mental models are constructed and stored, I think the Left could also become more conscious as to how they are locating identities, evaluations, mindsets, actions and goals with respect to their own worldview constructing efforts.

On the other side of the political divide, strategist Frank Luntz has also taken language strategy seriously, helping the Republican Party to gain seats in congress and get laws

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American Lexicon (2006).35 This document provides set talking points about crucial

topics (e.g. immigration), and in some cases tells politicians exact phrases to be constantly repeating (e.g. instead of ‘estate tax’ say ‘death tax’). He understands that language matters and that through sustained reiteration of his carefully selected words, the party will ensure that particular language structures with become conceptually entrenched over time. Considered from an imagistic perspective, this repetitive language use cues the hearer to simulate the same scenic backgrounds with the same episodic movements running through mental space, which potentially becomes stored and available for recall in frame space. This helps us to understand how this strict stay-on- message mandate within the Republican Party is so effective. Every time a political situation is construed in the same manner, the hearer (or reader) is prompted to visualize the exact same scene and episode structure. Encountering the same situational construals over a particular time period (e.g. a lifetime, after 9/11), these images come to constitute the scenic representations people rely upon for sense-making purposes. If people are continuously encountering the same scenes and episodes in political rhetoric, they may come to think that politicians are representing some objective state-of-affairs. Having mentally constructed the same scenes and episodes continuously within a political group, when a person hears (or reads) an unfamiliar construal it may violate more commonly encountered simulations and seem unsettling.

If anything, contemporary social movements can learn from the historical lessons of the New Left in order to avoid common political traps and dead ends. Based on the trajectory of Students for a Democratic Society from a community-based civil rights organization to an internationally-minded revolutionary organization, one can observe how strict ideological purity leads to destruction, how a politics based on fear and resentment is corrosive, how denial of mainstream politics leads to organizational instability, how lack of activists running for office keeps movement ideals on the fringe and how rhetorical vanguardism leads to irreconcilable factional disputes. Lasch (1969: 202) critiques the New Left’s emphasis on university students as the main agents of social change because they are not ‘devoted to democratic planning’. Instead, Lasch (1969: 200) suggests American history teaches us that the object of a radical democratic party should be to ‘introduce socialist perspectives into political debate, to create a broad consciousness of alternatives not embraced by the present system, to show both by teaching and by its own example that life under socialism would be preferable to life under corporate capitalism,

and thus in the long run to fashion a new political majority’. The lessons of the New Left

teach us that radicals on the fringe are not sufficient to place a truly democratic government in the halls of power. The contemporary Left must seek to create a much more inclusive worldview that activists can hold in common and work to make a reality. In my future work I intend to progress further into cognitive discourse analysis by

analysing corporate, religious and political texts. I will continue to draw on contemporary developments in the fields of cognitive linguistics and critical discourse analysis in order to better cultivate a theoretical model concerned to lay bare schematic structures active in discourse processing. My goal is to start making comparisons between different genres in order to analyse the unique ways internal scenes and episodes of cultural texts are

simulated by schematic structures within a formalised geometrical format. Like other deictic space model adaptations, my scenes-and-episodes version seeks to move beyond the surface structure of the text in order to consider the role of the body in the meaning

35Additionally, a document entitled the Global Language Dictionary (2009) has been leaked, in which he advises Israeli politicians how to address Western media outlets over the conflict with Palestine.

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making process. Through this development in the field of cognitive discourse analysis, I intend to keep exploring how image schemas are involved in providing spatial

boundaries, setting discourse contents in motion and directing the reader’s attention within conceptual space. Specifically, my intention is to continue developing a scenes- and-episodes framework for deictic space modelling.

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